H G Wells Omnibus, page 219
“I wonder.”
“A very good attitude of mind. If indulged in, in moderation. But when your wondering is over, you will begin to see that I am right. H’m? Ah! There on that terrace! Isn’t that my Lord Barra-longa and his French acquaintance? It is. Inhaling the morning air. I think with your permission I will go on and have a word with them. Which way did you say Father Amerton was? I don’t want to disturb his devotions. This way? Then if I go to the right_____”
He grimaced amiably over his shoulder.
§ 4
Mr. Barnstaple came upon two Utopians gardening.
They had two light silvery wheelbarrows, and they were cutting out old wood and overblown clusters from a line of thickets that sprawled over a rough-heaped ridge of rock and foamed with crimson and deep red roses. These gardeners had great leather gauntlets and aprons of tanned skin, and they carried hooks and knives.
Mr. Barnstaple had never before seen such roses as they were tending here; their fragrance filled the air. He did not know that double roses could be got in mountains; bright red single sorts he had seen high up in Switzerland, but not such huge loose-flowered monsters as these. They dwarfed their leaves. Their wood was in long, thorny, snaky-red streaked stems that writhed wide and climbed to the rocky lumps over which they grew. Their great petals fell like red snow and like drifting moths and like blood upon the soft soil that sheltered amidst the brown rocks.
“You are the first Utopians I have actually seen at work,” he said.
“This isn’t our work,” smiled the nearer of the two, a fair-haired, freckled, blue-eyed youth. “But as we are for these roses we have to keep them in order.”
“Are they your roses?”
“Many people think these double mountain roses too much trouble and a nuisance with their thorns and sprawling branches, and many people think only the single sorts of roses ought to be grown in these high places and that this lovely sort ought to be left to die out up here. Are you for our roses?”
“Such roses as these?” said Mr. Barnstaple. “Altogether.”
“Good! Then just bring me up my barrow closer for all this litter. We’re responsible for the good behaviour of all this thicket reaching right down there almost to the water.”
“And you have to see to it yourselves?”
“Who else?”
“But couldn’t you get someone—pay someone to see to it for you?”
“Oh, hoary relic from the ancient past!” the young man replied. “Oh, fossil ignoramus from a barbaric universe! Don’t you realize that there is no working class in Utopia? It died out fifteen hundred years or so ago. Wages-slavery, pimping and so forth are done with. We read about them in books. Who loves the rose must serve the rose—himself.”
“But you work.”
“Not for wages. Not because anyone else loves or desires something else and is too lazy to serve it or get it himself. We work, part of the brain, part of the will, of Utopia.”
“May I ask at what?”
“I explore the interior of our planet. I study high-pressure chemistry. And my friend_____”
He interrogated his friend, whose dark face and brown eyes appeared suddenly over a foam of blossom. “I do Food.”
“A cook?”
“Of sorts. Just now I am seeing to your Earthling dietary. It’s most interesting and curious—but I should think rather destructive. I plan your meals… . I see you look anxious, but I saw to your breakfast last night.” He glanced at a minute wrist-watch under the gauntlet of his gardening glove. “It will be ready in about an hour. How was the early tea?”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Barnstaple.
“Good,” said the dark young man. “I did my best. I hope the breakfast will be as satisfactory. I had to fly two hundred kilometres for a pig last night and kill it and cut it up myself, and find out how to cure it. Eating bacon has gone out of fashion in Utopia. I hope you will find my rashers satisfactory.”
“It seems very rapid curing—for a rasher,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “We could have done without it.”
“Your spokesman made such a point of it.”
The fair young man struggled out of the thicket and wheeled his barrow away. Mr. Barnstaple wished the dark young man “Good morning.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” asked the dark young man.
§ 5
He discovered Ridley and Penk approaching him. Ridley’s face and ear were still adorned with sticking-plaster and his bearing was eager and anxious. Penk followed a little way behind him, holding one hand to the side of his face. Both were in their professional dress, white-topped caps, square-cut leather coats and black gaiters; they had made no concessions to Utopian laxity.
Ridley began to speak as soon as he judged Mr. Barnstaple was within earshot.
“You don’t ‘appen to know, Mister, where these ‘ere decadents shoved our car?”
“I thought your car was all smashed up.”
“Not a Rolls-Royce—not like that. Windscreen, mud-guards and the on-footboard perhaps. We went over sideways. I want to ‘ave a look at it. And I didn’t turn the petrol off. The carburettor was leaking a bit. My fault. I ‘adn’t been careful enough with the strainer. If she runs out of petrol, where’s one to get more of it in this blasted Elysium? I ain’t seen a sign anywhere. I know if I don’t get that car into running form before Lord Barralonga wants it there’s going to be trouble.”
Mr. Barnstaple had no idea where the cars were.
” ‘Aven’t you a car of your own? ” asked Ridley reproachfully.
” I have. But I’ve never given it a thought since I got out of it.”
” Owner-driver,” said Ridley bitterly.
” Anyhow, I can’t help you find your cars. Have you asked any of the Utopians? “
“Not us. We don’t like the style of ‘em,” said Ridley.
” They’ll tell you.”
“And watch us—whatever we do to our cars. They don’t get a chance of looking into a Rolls-Royce every day in the year. Next thing we shall have them driving off in ‘em. I don’t like the place, and I don’t like these people. They’re queer. They ain’t decent. His lordship says they’re a lot of degenerates, and it seems to me his lordship is about right. I ain’t a Puritan, but all this running about without clothes is a bit too thick for me. I wish I knew where they’d stowed those cars.”
Mr. Barnstaple was considering Penk. “You haven’t hurt your face? ” he asked.
“Nothing to speak of,” said Penk. ” I suppose we ought to be getting on.”
Ridley looked at Penk and then at Mr. Barnstaple. “He’s had a bit of a contoosion,” he remarked, a faint smile breaking through his sourness.
“We better be getting on if we’re going to find those cars,” said Penk.
A grin of intense enjoyment appeared upon Ridley’s face. ” ‘E’s bumped against something.”
“Oh—shut it!” said Penk.
But the thing was too good to keep back. ” One of these girls ‘it ‘im.”
“What do you mean?” said Mr. Barnstaple. “You haven’t been taking liberties_____? “
” I ‘ave not,” said Penk. ” But as Mr. Ridley’s been so obliging as to start the topic I suppose I got to tell wot ‘appened. It jest illustrates the uncertainties of being among a lot of arf-savage, arf-crazy people, like we got among.”
Ridley smiled and winked at Mr. Barnstaple. “Regular ‘ard clout she gave ‘im. Knocked him over. ‘E put ‘is ‘and on ‘er shoulder and clop! over ‘e went. Never saw anything like it.”
“Rather unfortunate,” said Mr. Barnstaple.
“It all ‘appened in a second like.”
“It’s a pity it happened.”
“Don’t you go making any mistake about it, Mister, and don’t you go running off with any false ideas about it,” said Penk. ” I don’t want the story to get about—it might do me a lot of ‘arm with Mr. Burleigh. Pity Mr. Ridley couldn’t ‘old ‘is tongue. What provoked her I do not know. She came into my room as I was getting up, and she wasn’t what you might call wearing anything, and she looked a bit saucy, to my way of thinking, and—well, something come into my head to say to her, something—well, just the least little bit sporty, so to speak. One can’t always control one’s thoughts—can one? A man’s a man. If a man’s expected to be civil in his private thoughts to girls without a stitch, so to speak—well! I dunno. I really do not know. It’s against nature. I never said it, whatever it was I thought of. Mr. Ridley ‘ere will bear me out. I never said a word to her. I ‘adn’t opened my lips when she hit me. Knocked me over, she did—like a ninepin. Didn’t even seem angry about it. A ‘ook-‘it—sideways. It was surprise as much as anything floored me.”
“But Ridley says you touched her.”
” Laid me ‘and on ‘er shoulder perhaps, in a sort of fatherly way. As she was turning to go—not being sure whether I wasn’t going to speak to her, I admit. And there you are! If I’m to get into trouble because I was wantonly ‘it_____”
Penk conveyed despair of the world by an eloquent gesture.
Mr. Barnstaple considered. “I shan’t make trouble,” he said. “But all the same I think we must all be very careful with these Utopians. Their ways are not our ways.”
” Thank God! ” said Ridley. ” The sooner I get out of this world back to Old England, the better I shall like it.”
He turned to go.
“You should ‘ear ‘is lordship,” said Ridley over his shoulder. ” ‘E says it’s just a world of bally degenerates—rotten degenerates—in fact, if you’ll excuse me — § § * ! * ! * f * f ! degenerates. Eh? That about gets ‘em.”
“The young woman’s arm doesn’t seem to have been very degenerate,” said Mr. Barnstaple, standing the shock bravely.
“Don’t it?” said Ridley bitterly. “That’s all you know. Why! if there’s one sign more sure than another about degeneration it’s when women take to knocking men about. It’s against instink. In any respectable decent world such a thing couldn’t possibly ‘ave ‘appened. No ‘ow!”
“No—‘ow,” echoed Penk.
” In our world, such a girl would jolly soon ‘ave ‘er lesson. Jolly soon. See?”
But Mr. Barnstaple’s roving eye had suddenly discovered Father Amerton approaching very rapidly across a wide space of lawn and making arresting gestures. Mr. Barnstaple perceived he must act at once.
“Now here’s someone who will certainly be able to help you find your cars, if he cares to do so. He’s a most helpful man—Father Amerton. And the sort of views he has about women are the sort of views you have. You are bound to get on together. If you will stop him and put the whole case to him—plainly and clearly… .”
He set off at a brisk pace towards the lake shore.
He could not be far now from the little summerhouse that ran out over the water against which the gaily coloured boats were moored.
If he were to get into one of these and pull out into the lake he would have Father Amerton at a very serious disadvantage. Even if that good man followed suit. One cannot have a really eloquent emotional scene when one is pulling hard in pursuit of another boat.
§ 6
As Mr. Barnstaple untied the bright white canoe with the big blue eye painted at its prow that he had chosen, Lady Stella appeared on the landing-stage. She came out of the pavilion that stood over the water, and something in her quick movement as she emerged suggested to Mr. Barnstaple’s mind that she had been hiding there. She glanced about her and spoke very eagerly. ” Are you going to row out upon the lake, Mr. Bastable? May I come? “
She was attired, he noted, in a compromise between the Earthly and the Utopian style. She was wearing what might have been either a very simple custard-coloured tea robe or a very sophisticated bath wrap; it left her slender, pretty arms bare and free except for a bracelet of amber and gold, and on her bare feet—and they were unusually shapely feet—were sandals. Her head was bare, and her dark hair very simply done with a little black and gold fillet round it that suited her intelligent face. Mr. Barnstaple was an ignoramus about feminine costume, but he appreciated the fact that she had been clever in catching the Utopian note.
He helped her into the canoe. “We will paddle right out—a good way,” she said with another glance over her shoulder, and sat down.
For a time Mr. Barnstaple paddled straight out so that he had nothing before him but sunlit water and sky, the low hills that closed in the lake towards the great plain, the huge pillars of the distant dam, and Lady Stella. She affected to be overcome by the beauty of the Conference garden slope with its houses and terraces behind him, but he could see that she was not really looking at the scene as a whole, but searching it restlessly for some particular object or person.
She made conversational efforts, on the loveliness of the morning and on the fact that birds were singing—“in July.”
“But here it is not necessarily July,” said Mr. Barnstaple.
“How stupid of me! Of course not.”
“We seem to be in a fine May.”
“It is probably very early,” she said. “I forgot to wind my watch.”
“Oddly enough we seem to be at about the same hours in our two worlds,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “My wrist-watch says seven.”
“No,” said Lady Stella, answering her own thoughts and with her eyes on the distant gardens. “That is a Utopian girl. Have you met any others —-of our party—this morning?”
Mr. Barnstaple brought the canoe round so that he too could look at the shore. From here they could see how perfectly the huge terraces and avalanche walls and gullies mingled and interwove with the projecting ribs and cliffs of the mountain masses behind. The shrub tangles passed up into hanging pinewoods; the torrents and cascades from the snowfield above were caught and distributed amidst the emerald slopes and gardens of the Conference Park. The terraces that retained the soil and held the whole design spread out on either hand to a great distance and were continued up into the mountain substance; they were built of a material that ranged through a wide variety of colours from a deep red to a purple-veined white, and they were diversified by great arches over torrents and rock gullies, by huge round openings that spouted water and by cascades of steps. The buildings of the place were distributed over these terraces and over the grassy slopes they contained, singly or in groups and clusters, buildings of purple and blue and white as light and delicate as the Alpine flowers about them. For some moments Mr. Barnstaple was held silent by this scene, and then he attended to Lady Stella’s question. “I met Mr. Rupert Catskill and the two chauffeurs,” he said, “and I saw Father Amerton and Lord Barralonga and M. Dupont in the distance. I’ve seen nothing of Mr. Mush or Mr. Burleigh.”
“Mr. Cecil won’t be about for hours yet. He will lie in bed until ten or eleven. He always takes a good rest in the morning when there is any great mental exertion before him.”
The lady hesitated and then asked: “I suppose you haven’t seen Miss Greeta Grey?”
“No,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “I wasn’t looking for our people. I was just strolling about—and avoiding somebody.”
“The censor of manners and costumes?”
“Yes… . That, in fact, is why I took to this canoe.”
The lady reflected and decided on a confidence.
“I was running away from someone too.”
“Not the preacher?”
“Miss Grey!”
Lady Stella apparently went off at a tangent. “This is going to be a very difficult world to stay in. These people have very delicate taste. We may easily offend them.”
“They are intelligent enough to understand.”
“Do people who understand necessarily forgive? I’ve always doubted that proverb.”
Mr. Barnstaple did not wish the conversation to drift away into generalities, so he paddled and said nothing.
“You see Miss Grey used to play Phryne in a Revue.”
“I seem to remember something about it. There was a fuss in the newspapers.”
“That perhaps gave her a bias.”
Three long sweeps with the paddle.
“But this morning she came to me and told me that she was going to wear complete Utopian costume.”
“Meaning?”
“A little rouge and face powder. It doesn’t suit her the least little bit, Mr. Bastaple. It’s a faux pas. It’s indecent. But she’s running about the gardens_____. She might meet anyone. It’s lucky Mr. Cecil isn’t up. If she meets Father Amerton _____! But it’s best not to think of that. You see, Mr. Bastaple, these Utopians and their sun-brown bodies—and everything, are in the picture. They don’t embarrass me. But Miss Grey_____. An earthly civilized woman taken out of her clothes looks taken out of her clothes. Peeled. A sort of bleached white. That nice woman who seems to hover round us, Lychnis, when she advised me what to wear, never for one moment suggested anything of the sort… . But, of course, I don’t know Miss Grey well enough to talk to her and besides, one never knows how a woman of that sort is going to take a thing… .”
Mr. Barnstaple stared shoreward. Nothing was to be seen of an excessively visible Miss Greeta Grey. Then he had a conviction. “Lychnis will take care of her,” he said.
“I hope she will. Perhaps, if we stay out here for a time_____”
“She will be looked after,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “But I think Miss Grey and Lord Barralonga’s party generally are going to make trouble for us. I wish they hadn’t come through with us.”
“Mr. Cecil thinks that,” said Lady Stella.
“Naturally we shall all be thrown very much together and judged in a lump.”
“Naturally,” Lady Stella echoed.
She said no more for a little while. But it was evident that she had more to say. Mr. Barnstaple paddled slowly.
